One of the highlights for Sirma in 2024 was the consolidation of six subsidiaries under a unified  brand. This strategic move aimed to optimize operations, expand service offerings, and  strengthen client relationships. The consolidation already has positive financial effects, with  improved processes and increased efficiency leading to expanding business opportunities.

Momchil Zarev, Chief Growth Officer at Sirma, commented on the restructuring process:

“We are working towards providing maximum transparency so that more people can  understand the potential of the business we are developing. Whenever there is a  merger, there are initial structural changes, but that is part of the process.”

Momchil Zarev, Chief Growth Officer at Sirma

As part of its expansion strategy, Sirma acquired a majority stake in the Romanian technology  company Roweb Development. This acquisition not only expands Sirma’s market presence but  also aligns with the company’s ambition to become the leading IT provider in the Balkan region.  The Romanian market, being three times larger than Bulgaria’s, presents significant growth  opportunities. Sirma is actively seeking companies with more than 100 employees in the region,  particularly those, expanding into Western European markets.

Employee development remained a top priority for Sirma in 2024. Over 90 professionals  participated in skill development programs, reflecting the company’s commitment to the  personal and professional growth of its team.

“Unlike many other software companies, we have chosen to invest in our team and  enhance their qualifications at this moment. Sirma sets long-term goals that require  continuous development of high-quality specialists and know-how,”

Zarev added.

Although consolidation is often associated with cost optimization, Sirma has taken a different  approach:

“Almost always, when companies restructure, there are optimizations (in terms of staff).  In our case, these optimizations have been minor – below 1% so far. The goal of the  merger was not about optimization but rather the opposite – to achieve better results with  our existing resources. Our approach was somewhat different – we aimed to generate  business growth rather than just optimization.”

Among the company’s long-term objectives is listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and  expanding into the German market, where Sirma already has significant clients. Positive  feedback from these clients further strengthens the company’s confidence in this direction. The  NASDAQ remains the ultimate long-term goal for Sirma, making its shares accessible to a  broader range of investors.

For Sirma, 2024 was a year of transformation, marked by successful projects, strategic  acquisitions, and a strong commitment to employee development. Moving into 2025, the  company will continue to expand its services in key verticals such as software development,  business and technology consulting for banking, fintech, insurance, transportation, digital  healthcare, logistics, hospitality, e-commerce, public sector, cross-industry, and packaging industries. Sirma’s dedication to innovation remains a driving force in redefining industry  standards and supporting business growth across various fields.

Content and images courtesy of Sirma

“The number-one challenge facing B2C or B2B organizations in the region, when it comes to moving goods and services from point A to point B, is the vague or incomplete destination address.”

He added:

“When you put this together with the relatively high volume of goods returned — up to 40%, according to some reports we are seeing — optimizing routes becomes more important than ever. This is why we feel so strongly that we can add value in the Middle Eastern market.”

Couriers are facing increased demand in the wake of the pandemic and e-commerce volume is expected to remain high for some time. Some project that the e-commerce market in the UAE will reach $8 billion by 2025.

RouteQ believes that digital transformation will play a significant role in determining the shape of the region’s logistics market in the coming years.

The government is targeting a complete switch of the delivery fleet used by e-commerce and last-mile mobility solution providers to electric for reduced emission, Hero Electric said. The company added it has partnered with numerous B2B startups to supply electric scooters to address the segment’s challenges. Sohinder Gill, CEO, Hero Electric said:

“We constantly strive to quicken the pace of transition to e-mobility and push forward the same through B2B partnerships to strengthen the EV ecosystem across India. This partnership is another step to boost the rapidly growing logistics and delivery industry and steer our commitment to carbon-free mobility by electrifying the segment.”

Kapil Gupta, Founder & Director at Turtle Mobility said that it will also help them to generate work opportunities for self-employed individuals in the informal sector by offering them a more affordable and easily accessible alternative to ICE vehicles.

Amplify Studio is an environment that has low code. There, developers start with a data model, add content and authentication, so they can build a user experience using Figma. Figma is a tool that replaces Amplify Admin UI – a product that was released a year ago.

According to Rene Brandel, who is a senior product manager at AWS Amplify, Amplify Admin UI’s existing capabilities will be part of Amplify Studio going forward, which are providing a unified interface to enable developers to build full-stack apps faster.

In a blog post, Ali Spittel, a Senior Developer Advocate, Amazon Web Services, says that one of the big advantages of Amplify Studio is that developers can concentrate on the core business logic that makes their apps different. The brand new Amplify UI library includes components such as newsfeeds, contact forms, e-commerce cards, and so on. Furthermore, Spittel said in a tweet:

“Here’s the thing that’s different about @AWSAmplify studio: the “low code” is developer-first. It creates real, human-readable React components that you can extend yourself.”

AWS also released a second platform which requires almost no code for mobile and web applications next to Amazon Honeycode, released in beta last year. In 2015 Microsoft introduced PowerApps, which is a part of the later branded Power Platform. In January 2020, Google acquired AppSheet.

Each of them and several vendors like Salesforce, Mendix, and Outsystems with their low-code and no-code offerings are in a market that Forrester predicts will grow by 50% a year to more than $21 billion by 2024.

The investment, which comes 11 months after uLesson raised a $7.5 million Series A, was completed by five investors: Tencent, Nielsen Ventures, and existing investors Owl Ventures, TLcom Capital and Founder Collective. It is the largest disclosed investment in an African edtech startup.

The startup first launched by providing a product pack of SD cards and dongles with pre-recorded videos for K-12 students. They can either access lessons via streaming or use the SD cards to download and store the content.

uLesson has introduced new features for an all-encompassing edtech play for this demographic. It added quizzes and a homework help feature to connect students with tutors from universities. The startup also launched a one-to-many live class feature with polls and leaderboards and a one-to-one live experience for DevKids, a coding class independent of the core uLesson platform. The CEO, who also founded e-commerce platforms DealDey and Konga said:

“What we want ultimately is different strata of free users that can use the app and can pay for a premium experience to attend live classes or get the homework helper.”

The platform is available in other markets, such as South Africa, Sierra Leone, the UK, Liberia, Gambia and the US.

“This new and innovative payments feature on the Hepsiburada platform will help us to expand our total addressable market, and provide another way for Turkey’s significant unbanked population to access the benefits of the digital and ecommerce revolution.

Customers will be able to quickly and easily transfer money to their HepsiPay Wallet, with the final top up amount reflected on their next Turkcell bill.

It seems that despite Amazon’s professed customer-first mentality, the company failed to prioritize securing its customers’ personal information. Customer purchase histories were available to Amazon’s global customer service team, with little security or supervision to prevent the employees’ snooping.

A former service rep, who requested anonymity, said he remembered colleagues looking up the personal purchases of several celebrities. Eventually, accusations of employees viewing seller data to develop Amazon’s own products prompted questions about the company’s integrity. The former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos insisted that employees don’t access that data but said he couldn’t guarantee that the policy prohibiting employees from doing so wasn’t violated.

Flipkart said it has signed definitive agreements to acquire a majority stake in SastaSundar. However, it did not disclose the size of the deal. Ravi Iyer, Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Development at Flipkart said:

“The consumer internet ecosystem in India is growing rapidly as consumers recognize the opportunities and convenience that digital adoption is enabling in their lives. With growing awareness and focus on health heightened by the pandemic, there is a large opportunity and demand for affordable healthcare and ancillary offerings.”

India’s e-commerce platform is valued at over $37 billion and said its healthcare vertical will be called Flipkart Health+.

ScaleFocus did not disclose the value of its investment.

Last year, ScaleFocus opened a 900 sq m office in North Macedonia‘s capital Skopje.

At the end of 2019, North Macedonia’s prime minister Zoran Zaev said that ScaleFocus is ready to invest some 45 million euros ($52.3 million) and open more than 300 jobs in the country over the next five years.

Sofia-headquartered ScaleFocus, established in 2012, is a software development and digital services company with a global client base that includes Fortune 500 companies, innovative startups and industry leaders in information technology, e-commerce, insurance, healthcare, finance and energy and utilities.

In Bulgaria, ScaleFocus has offices in Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna. The company also has offices in London, Munich, Zurich, Athens and Tel Aviv.

Bezos made an early investment of $250,000 in Google in 1998, four years after he started Amazon.com. Google now operates under its parent company, Alphabet Inc. Later on, he invested over $1 million in the company, citing its future growth potential. Bezos also founded an investment company, Bezos Expeditions, in 2005, that mainly manages his personal investments.

Jeff Bezos has made a number of investments through Amazon.com, Inc., his personal wealth, Bezos Expeditions, and Nash Holdings LLC, a private company owned by him. Some of the sectors that he invests in include real estate, technology, media, travel, and charitable trusts and foundations. Along with this, he also invests in biotech companies to treat serious chronic illnesses, agricultural tech, and finance companies.

In August 2013, Bezos bought The Washington Post, an American daily newspaper, in a deal worth $250 million. At that time, the company was struggling financially. The acquisition was made through Nash LLC.

In 2008, he made an investment of nearly $15 million in Twitter. Along with this, some of his most famous investments also include Airbnb, Inc, Business Insider and Uber Technologies, Inc.

Recently, Jeff Bezos invested in an Indonesian e-commerce start-up, Ula. The company mainly offers technology solutions to retailers and expects to expand its operations in other regions as well. Currently, the billionaire is investing in a number of private companies as well.